Tag Archives: children

Murphy’s Media Memories returns. Now, I will be making sure to get 8 episodes out each year, preferably every March through October, with any Top 10 lists or small bonus episodes in-between.

Now, see my gateway into the Transformers Universe, a children’s book from 1984 that does a horrible job of connecting text to art, in what should be an important factor in a picture book. I do a brief run-down of all the Transformer characters in the TV show to show you just how off the book is when it comes to it’s characters. Also, I look at the 2nd Marvel Hardcover book to see just what my younger self missed out on.

For the latest Murphy’s Media Memories, I transfered an old VHS tape I had and uploaded it to the world. Welcome to the world of 1985, where you can learn about Halley’s Comet (if you are a kid). So, just how is this low-budget direct-to-video 80’s edutainment? Let’s find out.

I present to you a preview of Page 6 of Mechanaflux, my new Fantasy All-Ages Comic Book. Here, I will start with the original movie script, going from its jounrey to comic book adaptation script, to thumbnails, to pencils, to colored, and then to it’s final verison. Over the course of the next few weeks will show you the different steps and versions that it took to make this page to completion. First up, here is the rough draft of the script (I can’t seem to find my final draft for some reason):

First up, is the original Mechanflux script. I wrote this as a 100 page feature length movie for my Screenwriting Class at Southampton College.

MOVIE SCRIPT

EXT: TOLT – FRONT OF WOLT’S HOUSE

The town is on fire in all directions. The sounds of hundreds of MECHEERS stampede through the town.

EXT: TOLT – DARIUS’ HOUSE

Darius runs toward his house, carrying the two children. He turns his head toward voices.

MECHEERS

FIND AMULET. DESTROY.

INT: TOLT – DARIUS’ HOUSE

Darius closes the door. He runs to his basement steps, but then he hears steam signaling the rise of the arm cannon. A blast destroys his door and wall. The door crumbles to the ground.

ANGLE ON: Darius through the MECHEERS arm cannon.

Darius’ blue eyes turn darker blue as green fire forms near his eyes, growing larger as it moves forward. Darius raises his head toward the ceiling. Another green fire ball shoots from his eyes, grows larger as it moves forward, and destroys the upper walls. He jumps into his basement, holding the children, then another blast fires up from the basement and destroys the other upper walls. The Mecheer pushes itself up, but as soon as it straightens its body out, the ceiling falls and crushes the Mecheer. The building burns.

FADE OUT

ROLL OPENING CREDITS

END MOVIE SCRIPT

Now, this is the initial draft. I was excited writing this story, but it was obviously only ever going to either be a $150 million dollar+ movie or an animated movie. However, I realized I could feasibly make it a comic book. A few years later, I would be determined to make my screenplay into comic book form. Of course, that meant rewriting the entire script to fit the format of a comic book. Here is the first draft of that.

COMIC BOOK SCRIPT

Page 5

Panel 4 – Pull out to show the entire town (similar to Page 1, Panel 1) only now the entire city is on fire. Fire is ravaging many buildings. Smoke stretches outward.

Panel 5 – Darius is now inside her house, where she lives alone. She is holding the children _____ and ____. Her house is decorated with many spellbooks on the floor, as she is a messy individual, and her walls are adorned with tapestries of landscapes.

DARIUS

We’re here children. Soon we will escape this place.

Panel 6 – Darius’ front door caves in from a Mecheer’s fist.

Panel 7 – Angle On: Darius through the MECHEERS arm cannon.

MECHEER

Attention all Mecheers. Amulet Identified.

Page 6 – Darius’ house (interior and exterior), Tolt in flames.

Panel 1 – Focus On: Darius’ blue eyes turn red.

Panel 2 – Flames appear near Darius and begin to grow.

Panel 3 – Flames erupt outward, burning the Mecheer and pushing it backwards out the door. This can be seen from the outside, with the Mecheer being flung outside with a few other Mecheers in the vicinity.

Panel 4 – Darius (holding the children) runs down into her basement stairs.

Panel 5 – Outside, the fallen Mecheer (still on the ground) readies its arm cannon, along with other Mecheers.

END COMIC SCRIPT

You can see the only major change is that instead of the Mecheer getting up and having the house fall on it, now Darius simply cuts it down. Originally, I had the Mecheer rising to show how resilient and dangerous they are, but realized that it took up too much time and was cut early on in the comic script phase. In addition, I already have 3 panels of the Mecheers destroying the town and that was probably enough to convey their threat (this appears on the 3 panels right before this page). Also, Darius previously heard the Mecheer before it approached and crushed the house in, to indicate the immediate threat, but that really would only work better on film than on a comic page.

THUMBNAILS

Before the comic book began, my artist made my entire script into thumbnails of the entire issue, and what you see marked on it is me making many notes, in addition to me placing many arrows here and there, moving panels around, and removing others. Page 6 & 7 of the thumbnails are present, but as you will see later, the entire page was condensed a lot more. Also, I finally got the colors of magic down and exact way this world’s spells (or energy) are used, so you will later see that Darius no longer uses red energy and/or flames; everyone only uses Energy itself as a weapon. Also, notice that Darius is no longer in her home, as running to her home from the Mecheers give it a better sense of urgency. Should also mention that I changed Darius from a man to a woman, but my artist stated she wanted to keep the name Darius for her.

On Page 6, there is another panel above that I removed, and the same with Page 7, where I removed the bottom panels (so as to avoid too many spoilers and so you only see the process for this page)

PENCILS

Above are the pencils of the page. If you can’t tell, my artist goes all digital.

FINAL COLORED PAGE

There it is; the final pages, from writer and artist (over the course of multiple conversations). For some reason, it looks a little brighter than on my computer and in the physical comic book than it does here, because somehow the first half of the issue saved as CMYK format. Something that will have to be altered when I publish this as a webcomic (if I can figure out how).

That title is no joke. This is a board game / RPG game that I created after watching Jurassic Park and playing only 1 hour of a Dungeon & Dragons-like game.

While at my cousin’s place one day, he had me play this game that only required listening and then stating what you want to do (I do not remember if there were weapons and spells, or even items) and I tried to create a game similar to that, but ended up merging it with a board game. It was a board game where you couldn’t see the board, but had to listen to what I was describing so you wouldn’t go the wrong way.

However, this ‘board’ game, ended up being on over 30 pages of large Notebook paper. It started only as Jurassic Park, then every day or so, I would add another board (or another licensed property), until it was an immensely large game.

So, this is the latest episode I look back at this game I made when I was 12, without having looked at it in almost 20 years.